


Of His Questions

by Adenil



Series: The Answer to the Question Nobody Asked [2]
Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Angst, Korean War, M/M, New Fic, Sequel, domestic abuse mention, don't read this if you liked the potential happy ending from the last one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 14:33:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6288340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adenil/pseuds/Adenil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of <i> Of My Answers </i> Hawkeye spends the night at Frank's apartment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of His Questions

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to a fic I wrote 7 years ago (!) so I guess that gives us all hope that I might one day finish some of my other fics that are basically on permanent hiatus right now. I had always planned for Hawkeye to spend the night, but it's only after rewatching the first half of the show that I figured out what would actually happen if he did. And here it is.

“Won’t you…come in?”

And in Hawkeye went, because what else could he do? He had his answers in the shy smile Frank still sported, like a flower brightening each time he turned towards Hawkeye. Hawkeye took three hesitant steps into civilization and his boots sank into the carpet.

“So—” Frank cut himself off with a nervous giggle. “You’re still alive?”

Hawkeye frowned, a pang of annoyance starting a dull throb in his temple. “Yes,” he said. He nearly choked on the word, but the next flew easily enough, as if he hadn’t been away from Frank for years. As if it were yesterday that he was stabbing the other man with words. “After you left it got easier, actually. Or at least less nerve-wracking. We got a new Doctor in who's all fingers instead of thumbs.”

Frank nodded, as if he had expected that. How he could expect any of this, Hawkeye didn’t know. “Well, sit down,” he said; the insult rolled off his back like water off a duck. “I’ll make you some coffee.”

Hawkeye wished he could take back his words. “I’m sorry, it’s just…”

“Old habits die hard?” Frank smiled. _Smiled_.

“I…yes.” Hawkeye sat on the bowed couch in the center of the room. “Yes,” he said again, mostly to himself. Unfortunately, habits were the only thing too stubborn not to die.

He didn’t realize he was drifting until Frank set the hot coffee mug in his hands. Hawkeye clung to it. How long had he been out of it? A minute, maybe? He took stock. Hot coffee that was—mm, yes, blissfully good compared to Army brew. His toes were cold from the holes in his socks. Frank was sitting next to him, gazing at him with…concern?

Hawkeye had never seen Frank look like that.

“What? What?” Hawkeye took another drink.

“How long have you been back?”

“What day is it?”

The concern on Frank’s face deepened. “Tuesday. It’s about eleven o’clock.”

Hawkeye said nothing about not needing the time; truth was, he did need it. “Thirty-six hours.”

Frank whistled. “Woo-ee.” He nodded. “That explains it then. Have you eaten? Have you even been home; do you want me to call your father?”

“No, it’s—no. I just want to…” Do absolutely nothing, that’s what he wanted to do. Only he was itching and his skin was crawling and dammit Frank was twelve inches from him with a look of unabashed _concern_ and probably seventeen kinds of answers just waiting behind his teeth, swallowed up along with the smile Frank had started with. “I want to,” Hawkeye tried again. “Damn,” he whispered. “What do I want to do?”

“Just sit for a bit,” Frank recommended. He leaned back and rested an arm on the back of the couch, propping his head up. “Just sit.”

Hawkeye sat. Under the concern, all twisted up with the smell of hot coffee, he sat.

/

At some point there was lunch. Frank made sad little sandwiches and turned on the radio, and only then was Hawkeye made aware of the kind of poverty Frank lived in. He had no television, and the old ice box was, well, _old_ and the couch had seen better days about two wars ago and the wall-paper had been in style the war before that and when, exactly, had Hawkeye started measuring time in terms of war?

“Frank, you’re divorced,” he said. Somehow, the poverty and the divorce were connected in Hawkeye’s head.

“Figured that out yourself, did you?” Frank said, and for one second the old Frank was back. His eyes gleamed with self-righteousness as he bit into his sandwich, chewing dramatically. “Did you come all this way just to mock me about it?”

Hawkeye almost laughed in relief. “Would you be surprised if I had?”

Frank softened. “No,” he said, sounding almost sad. “Not at all.”

/

When he was asleep there were…swirls, crying men, dying women. Why was it that way? There were scalpels in his back and all his bones were falling out of his skin and he was being smothered no—no, he was holding the blanket in his own hand and why, why, why!?

Screaming woke him up. Hawkeyes stared at the ceiling for a long time, hyperventilating until he couldn’t stand it anymore. He stumbled into Frank’s bathroom and threw up a little. When he got back to the couch there was a little plate of cookies on the arm. Hawkeye took one and ate it. It tasted of cardboard and it was the most delicious thing he had eaten in months.

/

“Who _are_ you?”

Frank blinked. “What--?”

“I need answers!” Hawkeye threw the plate. Cookie crumbs scattered in the carpet. Frank took a nervous step back. “Who the hell are you, because you are not Frank Burns. You are not that simpering little fink who tried to crawl into the bosoms of a bunch of blondes and got himself kicked right up the chain of command and back stateside. You’re, you’re _kind_ you _monster_. Who are you and what have you done with Frank Burns?” He threw his blanket, and a pillow. He picked up the plate and threw it again and this time it shattered into a million pieces and Hawkeye nearly threw up again. “Damn you.” He threw more things. Anything his hands touched. “Damn you, damn you!” And Frank stood there, _understanding_.

“Wh—” Hawkeye was kneeling now. When had his legs given out? He couldn’t breathe. “I hate you.”

Frank winced bodily and Hawkeye almost took the words back. But he didn’t. “What do you need, Pierce?”

“Don’t call me that. I, I don’t want you to call me that.” He grabbed at his own hair and tugged, hard, new tears welling in his eyes alongside the ones he hadn’t yet even noticed. “Who are you?”

“I’m Frank,” Frank said, kneeling beside Hawkeye. “I’ve always been Frank.”

“How dare you.” Hawkeye felt unreal. Someone was putting water on his face and he couldn’t even feel it. “How dare you go home before me.”

“I didn’t deserve it,” Frank whispered. “And you didn’t deserve to have to stay there.”

Hawkeye choked and the carpet was rough against his cheek from where he was lying on it, curled around himself and breaking down. “Then why?”

“You’re the only one who could save them.”

Frank rested a hand against Hawkeye’s back; Hawkeye cried.

/

“My first week back I tried to hit Louise.”

Somewhere in the apartment there was a leaky faucet. Hawkeye could hear it. It grounded him. He felt wrung out like an old sponge, all his energy drying into little salt stains on the carpet of Frank’s living room, spent in the currency of tears. He stared down at the cracked wood of Frank’s kitchen table and thought about that steady drip, drip, drip. Maybe it was left over from the coffee Frank had made.

Hawkeye didn’t say anything.

“I was committed to a hospital for…a long time.” Frank stared into his coffee. “At first, I made excuses. It was the war, it was all the fighting and the blood and the dying. Well, you know.” He glanced up and then back to his coffee quickly. “You know better than I do, because anyway it wasn’t the war at all.”

“You’ve always been like that.”

Frank took a deep breath. “Yes.”

It sat in the air.

“I’m controlling, narcissistic, abusive, domineering, aggressive,” Frank said without inflection. It was like he was reading an ingredients list. Contains: One Frank Burns, 4077 milligrams, do not consume without alcohol. “Margaret told me that once. Louise screamed it at me a few times. I think even you said some of those.”

“I wouldn’t put it past me,” Hawkeye said.

“It’s different coming from a doctor.” Frank paused and looked up at Hawkeye again, a wry smile tugging at his lips. “Well, you know what I mean.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

Frank shrugged. He swirled his coffee. “I’m still that, but I’m working on it. Working on the other stuff, too. The stuff about the war and the, the,” he choked. “I’m working on it but I might never get through it. And since you know all that…” Frank looked at him, just looked, inquisitive and desperate.

“Why are you here, Hawkeye?”

/

Hawkeye thought about telling him the tale of wandering around the state looking for Frank in all the wrong places. Of answers and questions that taste like moonshine martinis. He thought about explaining the dead water glass in his hands, Louise’s sickening smile, the phone call he still hadn’t made to home, BJ’s parting words, all of that.

Instead, he asked, “Did you mean what you said on the phone?”

/

Frank took a deep breath, but he didn’t ask what Hawkeye was talking about.

/

“I work at the general hospital,” Frank said as Hawkeye stood with one hand on the door knob.

“I’m glad you’re still doctoring,” Hawkeye said honestly.

Frank shrugged, looking chuffed. “Right, well, I…I’ll see you around, Hawkeye.”

Hawkeye had no bags to drop. He still wore the same civvies and probably smelled like the seat of a bus. He felt grimy and filthy and his eyes stuck together from all the crying and not sleeping he’d been doing. His mouth tasted mostly of coffee, which was the only part he did enjoy about the state he was in. His hands were shaky and he was tired.

He reached out and took Frank’s hand. He reeled him in and Frank stumbled forward. At least that was the same.

It was like two copies of Frank were overlaid. There was the terrible one, violent and boorish, hateful and hated. The one that came back early and hit his wife and was all the things Hawkeye despised. There was also the not-so-bad one, quiet and nervous, the one who had explained that phone call. Whose words still bounced around Hawkeye’s head. The one who was only alive now because of doctors and medicine and the fact that the war was now a fading memory for Frank.

It was probably Hawkeye’s imagination that Frank smelled like Korea. Their breath mingled, coffee overtook. Maybe it was Hawkeye that still smelled like Korea, or it was just a memory.

Hawkeye kissed him. Slow, exploratory. He was good at this and he could hardly remember what it was like not to show off a little. Frank let him—or participated, Hawkeye couldn’t tell and didn’t care at the moment. Hawkeye turned him and pressed him against the wall, letting his hands roam over Frank’s body and reveling when Frank roamed back, hesitant.

Hawkeye had heard enough Major-to-Major conversations to know this wasn’t Frank’s usual mode of operation, but he didn’t care. He’d take hesitant. He’d take the smell of Korea and closed eyes and quiet, so quiet.

“I finally got out,” Hawkeye whispered against Frank’s lips. “If you see me around… that means they’ve got me back in.”

Frank opened his eyes. He set his jaw in acknowledgment.

Hawkeye took his face in hand and kissed him once more, chaste. “Last chance, Frank.”

“…Goodbye, Hawkeye.”

/

Five dollars was enough to get to Crabapple Cove. But only barely.

/

_“Did I mean it?” Frank asked. He glanced around his apartment like he might find the answers there. Maybe he was. Answers like, stay away. Stop hurting people. Stop reminding him of death and hurt and blood and pain and crying. Don’t accept what you can’t handle without closed fists. Stop thinking only of yourself. Let Hawkeye go._

_“I was confused. Of course I didn’t mean it.”_


End file.
